


Master of Death

by imaginary_golux



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Hero Complex, The Deathly Hallows, but still fairly dark, not as dark as it sounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 07:11:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13313046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: The Master of the Deathly Hallows can do almost anything he likes...Except die.Beta by my Best of all Beloveds, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	Master of Death

It’s been years since he shed his human skin, but he still remembers the shape of it, the awkwardness of flesh and blood and bone made mortal.

It was the second Killing Curse that did it: the first one made him more than mortal, the second set him free. Not that he knew that, for a while; he kept his human skin for _years_ because he didn’t know there was another option, because it was so normal a discomfort that he didn’t even notice how it constricted. There were signs, even then, that he was something other than he had been - how he sired no children, though his wife was from a line known for fertility. How quickly he healed, with no scar left behind but the ones on his head and hand that told him who he was. How slowly - how painfully slowly - he aged.

The Master of Death cannot be mortal. That is a truth it took him far too long to figure out. Hermione was gone before he knew he even needed to begin to learn that truth, and so he had no companion to harangue him over the books, to find new dusty tomes and enthuse about their ancient contents. He had to do that all himself, Hermione’s remembered voice a constant, adored companion - _Honestly,_ she sighed in memory, _don’t you ever read?_

The Master of Death cannot be mortal, and so Harry Potter, thrice dead, the Boy Who Lived, has gained what his great enemy so desired, and knows it for the curse it is.

He died once as an infant, and his mother’s love kept Death from him.

He died twice as he grew to manhood, and his own will brought him back from Death’s own doorstep.

He died thrice when he stepped from his human skin and left it to be buried by the grieving crowds, who never noticed that he stood among them, Cloak about his shoulders and Ring upon his finger and Wand clasped loosely in his hand - what use to cling to it, when he cannot lose it, the wood as much a part of him as the blood he shed to raise his enemy?

Thrice dead and living still - _a half-life,_ a long dead memory insists, _a cursed existence,_ though he’s drunk no blood drawn from a unicorn unwilling - no longer mortal and yet mortal born; sometimes he thinks he _should_ have let Tom win, just to see how little he liked the taste of proper immortality.

But no, that would have been disastrous, and for all that he is Master of Death, the thrice-dead Boy Who Lived yet values life. He can’t do much, these days, or rather, he could do _too_ much if he grew too unwise. He could become a greater Lord than his great enemy had ever dreamed of being, draw Dark and Light together under his banner and break the world and forge it up anew into the shape he chose - he could. The power in the Elder Wand is multiplied tenfold by Cloak and Ring, and the Master of Death could master the living, if he chose, if he desired.

He’s never wanted to rule.

To teach, yes, he’s wanted that, and now and again as the decades turn to centuries and roll away beneath his feet he puts on human seeming and walks the halls again of the only place which he has ever truly thought was _home_ , the ancient castle always new again, its very stones humming a welcome to his immortal bones. He teaches anything and everything - immortality is very useful for one thing at least, and that is learning all there is to learn - and under his tutelage the students blossom, clever Ravenclaws and stubborn Hufflepuffs, reckless Gryffindors and cunning Slytherins. He cannot find it in himself to make distinctions among them anymore, though he recalls that when he wore a human skin he thought it vital to proclaim himself a lion, to swathe himself in red and gold. But they are all so young, so innocent - there is no Dark Lord now, to hound their steps and curse their childhoods. He cannot see the differences which loomed so large when he was young himself.

(There are no Dark Lords anymore, while the Master of Death yet remembers his mortal life and human skin, the second death which set him free. Now and again a fool will rise to grasp such power, sure in his youth and folly that he will succeed where all before have failed; and each and all discovers that the Master of Death is there before him, and what he grasps is Death itself. No Dark Lords rise to power while the Master of Death watches, and the children of the school he loves so well grow up in Light and innocence, the past and all its cruelties a legend and a myth to them.)

It seems sometimes a vast and cosmic joke to him, that he who only ever wanted to be loved, to live in quiet peace among his family, to _belong_ somewhere, now wanders ageless, friendless, endless among the hordes of mortals who teem and breed and war and multiply, and belongs nowhere at all. If it is a joke, though, then he is yet too young to find its humor, save in his bleakest moments, and when he laughs at it, any observer - should such a one exist - would be quite sure that they were hearing the sobs of a heartbreak never to be mended.

The worst of it, he sometimes thinks, is that he _could_ put down the Cloak and Ring and Wand, leave them in the ancient mausoleum of his long-dead mentor, walk head high into the forest and let the years turn him between one step and another into lifeless dust and bone. They are waiting for him, on the other side of that final doorway: his mother and father, his godfather and mentor, his wife and dearest friends, nieces and nephews and godchildren, hordes upon hordes of those he loved while he still wore a human skin and thought himself as mortal as they were. They are waiting, and would welcome him, he knows, with open arms and cries of joy, with outpourings of love.

But.

The Master of Death has many powers, but there is one he does not have. He cannot destroy the artifacts which give him immortality, which let him step aside from time and walk unhindered by the years. And if he puts them down - if he leaves the Wand with his mentor’s crumbling bones, flings the Ring from a cliff into the deepest chasms of the sea, hides the Cloak in a frozen cave beneath impenetrable ice - if he puts down his Mastery and goes at last to join his family in death -

Someone will find them. _Someone_ will take the Wand from the marble tomb, and summon the Ring from the depths of the sea, and climb the icy mountains to melt the Cloak from its hiding place. Someone will become again the Master of Death, and the current Master knows, the knowledge bitter and terrible as poison, that whoever it is, they will not do as he has done, and wander the world seeking only to protect its people.

The next Master of Death who claims the Cloak and Wand and Ring will rise as a Dark Lord, great and terrible, and grind the world beneath his heel, and all the bright, brief lives that the Boy Who Lived protects will be snuffed out forever, leaving only darkness and ash behind to tell the tale.

Harry Potter has died three times, and each time he has died to save the world. Once, as an infant, shielded by his mother’s love, to send his great enemy shrieking into the wilderness, less than a spirit, less than a ghost. Twice, as a young man, to end a war and save his friends, and send his enemy at last to his long-avoided end. Thrice, as an old man, old and wise, who looked with rheumy emerald eyes at what would come if he set down his Mastery, and saw it clearly, and chose, as he chooses every hour of every day, to stand as he has always stood, endless and ageless and unbreakable, against the rising of the Dark.

He is the Master of Death, and for the sake of all the world, he will never truly die.

**Author's Note:**

> I am imaginarygolux on tumblr; drop on by!


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